Sedition by another name


In India today, truth has become a crime. Reporting a public seminar can bring the police to your door. Asking questions can earn you an FIR. Criticism can be branded treason. This is not the promise of a democracy, but the reality of Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita—sedition reborn under a new name.

The Supreme Court suspended the old sedition law, IPC 124A, in 2022, recognising its abuse. But instead of scrapping it, the government slipped the same poison back into the law books, only stronger. The latest targets are The Wire’s Siddharth Varadarajan and Karan Thapar, summoned by Assam Police without even being told what crime they had committed. Their offence? Reporting remarks by India’s defence attaché in Indonesia on the loss of fighter jets in Operation Sindoor. Even after the Court extended them protection, a fresh FIR was lodged the very same day.

This is not an isolated act of overreach. Disha Ravi, a young climate activist, was branded seditious for sharing a “toolkit.” Veteran journalist Vinod Dua faced sedition for criticising the government’s COVID-19 response. Manipur journalist Kishorechandra Wangkhem spent months in jail over Facebook posts. Each case showed sedition as a blunt weapon to crush dissent. Section 152 has now sharpened that weapon further.

The government cloaks this law in the language of “national security.” But democracies are not weakened by journalists reporting uncomfortable truths—they are weakened when governments are too fragile to tolerate them. Section 152 is not about sovereignty. It is about silencing the press, punishing critics, and protecting political power from scrutiny.

The consequences are devastating. India already sits at 151 in the World Press Freedom Index. If laws like Section 152 are allowed to thrive, that number will only sink further. Citizens will be left not with journalism but with propaganda; not with debate but with fear.

The Supreme Court must step in again. It must not allow sedition to survive in disguise. For if Section 152 stands, India will entrench fear as state policy and bury free expression under the weight of criminal law. Journalism is not treason—it is democracy’s last line of defence.

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